By far the easiest solution is to get a raid5 NAS box and use it as your primary storage medium. On a regular schedule you can make a redundant copy to an external drive and store it somewhere else.

When I hear stories of people backing up to DVD, the first thing I always think is, oh my god, how much free time do you have? I have 140 gigs of pictures and I'm sure that's a lot less than a true pro. Backing that up to DVD would require 28 disks for crying out loud.

Drobo makes a pretty clever solution for all this.

As to the suggestions for FreeNAS...I haven't used it in two or three years, but when I did, I thout it was a debacle. It was far too complicated and required far too much user configuration. I think this was back in the version 7 days...has it improved since then?

The flower pic posted by neuroanatomist is the type of shot that my wife likes taking. Bear in mind that we're upgrading from an old SX100 point and shoot, so I imagine that pretty much anything is going to be a huge upgrade.

Ill look at the 15-85, but I think the extra little bit of zoom on the 24-105 will carry the day for me...

How are you calculting the magnification on the lens? (You guys use acronyms almost as much as the military...

FWIW, the 17-55mm also has two UD elements instead of one, meaning less CA. The only area where the L lens clearly wins is that it has less vignetting (always the case using an EF lens on a crop body).

I'm on the cusp of ordering a new setup from the Canon Loyalty Program. The current plan is to get a T3i with the 24-105 F4/L lens and the 50mm F1.8 prime. (Vegas odds makers are wagering 100:1 that Canon releases the T4i about 90 seconds after I receive this, but I'm just tired of waiting...)

So the question is...how usefull will either lens be for macro photography? I spend most of my time on portraits and landscapes, but my wife loves taking pictures of flowers.

I'm still struggling with "EF compatibility, but not EF mount." If you can't mount it, it's not compatible....by definition.

...Unless they're talking about an adapter, but that's far from clear.

Anyway, if Canon releases a mirrorless camera that doesn't support EF-(S) lenses, that will be a huge failure (in my opinion). I can't think of a reason that rings true that would compel them to contrive a new form factor.

Yes. There would be no point making an EF mount mirrorless, the whole point of going mirrorless is so that you can mount the lens closer to the sensor for a smaller package.

I disagree entirely.

To me, the whole point of going mirrorless is to begin to transistion away from some of the physical limitations and liabilities the the current cameras have. Current cameras still operate too much old film cameras in my opinion...

Based on all of this, I'm definitely leaning toward a T3i. With the Canon Loyalty Program, I can get a T3i body for ~$480 or so. Our original budget was going to be around $1000, so that leaves me $500-$600 for a decent lens (maybe something in the 24-70 range...not sure)

My personal OPINION for what you do (non sports) get the 60D and save for FF. If sports, then 7D unless you can get additional permission/budget to go FF (5DM3, 1Ds)

But why? You just got done saying that all the cameras IQ is about the same, so why should I spend the extra money on the 60D? I won't be shooting any sports, and the most demanding thing I'll be doing is shooting some live theater once every two months, and some sunset landscapes...